Reality TV rarely represents anything viewers would recognize as actual reality. The Bachelor uses real people but puts them in a dating pageant that never seems to result in any actual marriages. Survivor drops them on an island where no one's life is actually at risk, and it's just a popularity contest in the end.

The Apprentice has one thing going for it. It is a real job with Donald Trump. Trump is a character and there's the showmanship of the boardroom firings and the weekly challenges, but something about it is real. Celebrity Apprentice is more of the show version. Actors, athletes and rockers don't need a job, but they play for charity, and so viewers can see a gang of notable eccentrics compete.

Scheduling an interview with a rock star requires the participation of a whole entourage. First an assistant calls to make sure the reporter is there. Then a publicist calls to make sure the reporter is briefed on all of Michaels' projects. When Michaels himself calls, he is on, projecting an engaging performance even through a phone line.

SG: What is it about these reality shows that suits your personality?

BM: You know, for Apprentice, that's a pretty easy one for me. It was the fact that first of all, I'm a lifelong juvenile diabetic. The fact that I'm a lifelong diabetic is probably a big reason for it. I've watched the first two seasons and I love that challenge. I think that also, after coming out of Rock of Love and doing three seasons of Rock of Love, it was nice to show that there's another side besides just sucking face with girls and drinking beer. [Laughs] I've got some other talents. I'm not sure what they are but I was anxious to show that for me, luck doesn't fall in my lap. It's always been the harder I work, the luckier I got.

SG: When you're into the business world of The Apprentice does it draw out different aspects of your personality?

BM: I think for sure. One of the things that happens, when we're in there, all of us, especially this year, when I say I think it was the best cast they've had, here's why. Everyone came in there wanting to win. You know how sometimes you watch shows and you know immediately who's going to be the first one to get killed off? You kind of look and you're like, 'Oh, that one's going.' This one, everyone came firing. The first day, when you see this whole Apprentice open up, I flew in because the night before, I played a concert in Leone, Mexico at the arena that night before, and landed that morning. I'll just put it this way, let's just say the timing wasn't the best. I'll just leave it at that. I can't give you too much. So I had to quickly get into gear but everyone there was a competitor and it really brought out that really competitive spirit that I have in there. There's two really extreme sides to me. There's a side of me that really loves to play. I love to party, I love to rock and there's a side of me that really works hard too.

SG: Is it hard to invest in the competition like it's the real Apprentice? I know you want to do well for charity, but you don't need a job with Trump.

BM: I can't speak for anybody else but I can tell you this much. I lived in the moment. I took every task that he threw at us, and I just took those tasks and I worked really hard and did the best I could do. I didn't go, 'Oh, this is TV.' I think after doing Rock of Love for three years, and before that I had done Nashville Star, the funny side of me says my acting skills are limited which is why I lean towards reality. The other side of me says there's this part of me, I do really well in the real world. When the real me comes out and you're not forcing me to be something I'm not, I've been my own boss since I was literally 17 years old, for better or worse. I think this show really helped to bring out that side of me, that competitive side but also the street smarts.

SG: You must have a certain business savvy to survive the music industry, right?

BM: You know it and let me tell you. People always talk about the entertainment business in broad strokes. Let me tell you something. I've been in the movie side of it, I've been in the reality TV side. The music side is the most savage side, hands down. You've got good people and straight up evil people and they all seem to be able to get through the cracks on the music side because they run into musicians like myself. They're young, they want to make it and they don't always know exactly what they're reading or the contracts they're signing. I was just lucky that I was street savvy to read through that stuff and not sign away the publishing and all that kind of crazy stuff.

SG: Do you wear a suit to the boardroom?

BM: Let me put it this way. I'm pretty Bret Michaels in it. It would be a Bret Michaels suit. I don't know exactly what that means, but let's put it this way, it wasn't a typical business suit, no. It wasn't your typical suit although I will tell you this, I learned a few things, I can say this about Apprentice. When I went in there, I learned three things. My computer skills got much better. I'll just tell you that much. I learned how to text for the first time in my life. Everyone laughs because I'm the guy that would still have a pager if I wasn't kicked into the future. Then the best thing of all of it was that it really honestly, there is no slacking because they work you hard. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I literally went in there thinking this'll be kind of fun. You do some work, blah blah blah. When I got in there, I had no idea what I had walked into, like the hours that they push you. I'll tell you what, it can break you.

SG: It does sound different from Rock of Love.

BM: Yes, which is different hours.

SG: What do you think shows like Rock of Love have done for real world relationships, with their examples of outrageous behavior?

BM: I say this carefully, but when I went in to do the show, I just went in to have fun. I had become newly single. The first time it came up, I turned it down and I just said I wasn't ready for that. The second time, I thought, 'You know what? I'm going to go in and make this a party. I'm going to make it fun. I'm not going to allow them to tell me who I like or don't like.' I think it set [a tone of] fun for this reason. You look at all the stuff that's going on now. I did the lingerie mud football thing. Honestly, I made the show a party. I took the girls out, we raced motocross, we went camping, we did stuff. I think that in a relationship, this is the truth, I think a lot more of it would work if people had a lot more fun and mixed in the responsibility with it. In other words, what happens is one day a relationship becomes just responsibility and all of a sudden you forgot why you liked or loved that person in the first place. That's the truth. You have to still be excited to see them and have fun in a relationship and I think that also brings out, like on Rock of Love Bus, I think it really brought out the character of what people are. In other words, I always call it the three month period of dating. It's sort of an incubation period. You go in and everyone says bullsh*t stuff like they like to hike and take long walks, you know what I mean? All of a sudden, put them into a situation where they actually go camping and see how they react. Put them in situations and watch how people react. That's when you're going to see the real person come out. For me, it made it a lot of fun and it was a good time doing it.

SG: That is a really good message. Do you think that's what viewers got out of seeing the show?

BM: Remember it's a lot of editing. We didn't get in on the editing. It sometimes appears like it was cat fighting and 24/7 drunken debauchery. There were a couple good hours in there when we were sober and eating by the table and cooking and talking about life. In that time, you get the best of both worlds. When they would always ask me advice on these relationship shows, I said, 'Here's the bottom line. If you love somebody, you love them. You're having a great time with them and the responsibility comes and you want to be responsible.' What happens is sometimes you meet somebody and then you sort of suck out of them everything you liked them for. Then that's when people move on to other relationships. If you can still have fun with somebody and look at them as your peer, that's what makes it great.

SG: I just see even The Bachelor never ends up in marriage or long lasting relationship.

BM: No, but for me, I think what worked on my show is I was straightforward. You watch the beginning of every year. I said this to the girls right up front, 'Let's make it a party, let's have fun, let's date. If something comes from it, great. If it doesn't, I got to meet some really cool people.' You'll never see me on a show where the first day I walk out and I go, 'I love all of you and want it all to work.' Even the first season of Rock of Love, the very first one years ago, they would ask me, 'What are you going to do if one of the girls isn't into you?' I said, 'Let 'em tell me.' They said, 'Well, that's going to be embarrassing on TV.' Lo and behold, the first night I walked up to the one girl, Lauren, and she's like, 'Yeah, I'm not really that into you.' And I go, 'Oh, is there anything I can do?' She goes, 'Yeah, I'm just not that into you.' I'm like, 'Okay.' But that's real life and I think people caught on my show the reality that was going on, rather than everyone was scripted and told what to do. We just sort of cut loose and let it happen.

SG: So how's your love life now?

BM: I think my love life is great. Again, I've got two beautiful daughters and I think that anyone that steps into me in a relationship has to understand straight up that there is no doubt I also love playing music. I said this before 1000 times, I'll say it again. Rock n' roll has been the reason for and the ruin of all my relationships. In other words, it's exciting at first, the traveling and doing stuff, but the fact that I love it is almost like I've already got my daughters I love, I've got a music career that I love. I think that's one of the things of trying to find that balance. At first it's exciting because you're traveling, you're doing stuff, you're going from city to city. Then to some people it just gets old or tiresome.

SG: Good transition to music. Miley Cyrus might seem like an odd pairing. What sort of groove do you find together?

BM: Here's exactly what happened. Miley's first concert was seeing Poison in Nashville, TN at the Starwood Arena. That was her first concert ever and I remember her doing a couple interviews and reading that. Then I met the whole family. I knew Billy Ray and I knew Tish and they came out to a couple shows in L.A. Then Miley when we were in New York, it was great because they wanted to recut "Every Rose Has Its Thorn." She said, 'It's one of my all time favorite songs.' She just is one of the people I said that will make the jump. That's my feeling. She'll make that transition from a young pop star into having a long career, I'm going to say, as a rock star or as a musician. I really feel that, because she can sit down at the piano and play. We sat down with the guitars and started playing music and just had a real natural chemistry. The next thing you know, she went in and she sang some of the stuff. We bumped the key up because she sings, obviously, very high. So I bumped the key up from a G to a B. We just went from there and it was really a good experience in New York. We're finishing it in L.A. now.

SG: What about collaborating on an original song with her?

BM: Yeah, I have a new solo album called Custom Built and I have a song on there called 'Nothing to Lose.' When we were just sitting around in the studio hanging out, I played her a couple of the tracks and like, 'Holy crap, that's a really, really good song.' She fell in love with the lyrics and said she wanted to try something a little different. One of her idols is Stevie Nicks. I said, 'Well, I worked with Stevie and wrote songs for her and produced some of her stuff. She's very freestyle. Why don't you go in and just kind of listen to the song and sing some stuff around it?' She just really, really nailed it. It was sort of a freestyle unproduced session and we got out of it exactly what we wanted to.

SG: Have you found another new generation has discovered your music through Guitar Hero?

BM: The one thing I can say was Guitar Hero and Rock of Love just brought not only the solo music but that Poison music. We've been fortunate because Poison had already done one generation skip where you make it long enough to get to the next generation. Now all of a sudden with Rock of Love and Guitar Hero, not only solo but Poison, it's brought that music out and they get to hear it. It seems like there's a big resurgence of music from the '70s and '80s, that sort of '70s and '80s rock groove that's sort of coming back anyway which is nice.

SG: Was "Talk Dirty to Me" just an innocent love song?

BM: In some ways it's a really dirty innocent love song. Pretty direct though. You don't really beat around the bush. It kind of cuts right to the chase.

SG: Thinking about "Every Rose," were you doing sensitive metal back then?

BM: No, I would not say I thought of it as sensitive metal but I think 'Every Rose' really broke the door wide open because a lot of stuff back then, when I say pop power ballad, it was the first one of that genre that brought out the acoustic guitar and kind of broke it wide open again where you can start out with the acoustic. I was going through a situation where a girl broke my heart, an exotic dancer of all things. It was one of those moments where I just wrote the song and Capital Records really didn't like the song. They thought it was a career killer. It ended up becoming a number one song in pop rock and country which was nice.

SG: Isn't that the case with all the classics, that the ones the bosses don't want become the biggest hits?

BM: It's the weirdest thing because when I say this truthfully, I'll never forget walking into Capital. Even though we have our own label through Capital, right? We went in there and I said, 'We want to shoot this video.' I said 'Every Rose' and they fought me. It was an ugly argument in that conference room. They're like, 'This song sounds kind of Americana, it sounds kind of country.' I said, 'Look, we had 'I Won't Forget You' on the first record and it did really well.'' They're like, 'Yeah, but that wasn't like this.' I just really fought them on it and we finally went, we were at Brown County Arena in Green Bay and we just brought out the video cameras and shot the video pretty much ourselves. It was that simple. Let's just shoot live footage and open up this beginning and that was it.

SG: Are you working on more solo music or more collaborations?

BM: I write a lot with a lot of other top notch writers like Jeffrey Steele and people like that, but what I've been doing is mostly just focusing on just solo music. I hope one day Poison will make another record, another new studio album but right now it just is highly unlikely. I'm one of those guys, in my house if you were here you'd see I've got this beautiful studio. I go in there all the time and I still am excited and passionate about making music.

SG: Are you putting together a new album or touring with the current one?

BM: Here's everything that's going on. The new album is simply called Custom Built. It's a new solo record. Then the tour kicks off. Right now all the way through the end of the year, all the dates are coming in but it starts right now in Hidalgo, TX. It's called where it's a combination of the U.S. and Mexico and it's a great festival. Tim McGraw is playing on Saturday and I believe I'm playing Sunday. This is all solo this year. There's no Poison. It's all solo and I'm really excited. It kicks off and then we're out for the whole year in Canada, we go to Australia, Mexico and then we go to Japan, Europe, all that.

SG: What are we going to see in your upcoming book?

BM:Simon and Schuster's putting out a book that's their biggest preordered book so far to date and it's called Roses and Thorns: The Reality of my Rock n' Roll Fantasy. It will bring you to your knees not only laughing but crying. I'm not kidding you. Somewhere between what I'll call my comedy of errors that is my life and then fighting to get through it, the real reality behind the curtain of what goes on of trying to succeed.

SG: Was there a point in your life where you became comfortable sharing your personal trials?

BM: Here's the thing. The book is the hardest thing I've ever [done]. Honestly, if you were to call Lauren right now, the editor at Simon and Schuster, it's been the most difficult thing I've ever done. I told her straight up a couple times, 'Let's just not do it' because there's moments where I just don't feel like I want to throw anybody under the bus, but I also have to be able to tell you the story. It's exciting. I want you to read the raw reality, but in order to do it, I also don't want to hurt someone else's life that has nothing to do with the book. It's a Catch-22 so I think what I'm able to do is grab pictures. I want to be able to prove what I'm saying. So you have pictures and then the story that goes with them. It's really an interesting read.

SG: Do you get to discuss how you've handled having diabetes on the road and on tour?

BM: It's really difficult. I've had it for 40 years. I got it when I was six years old and there are times when it's a battle, but I find a way. I do four injections a day so I get up early in the morning. Regardless of when I go to sleep, sometimes I go to sleep at three or four in the morning but I'm back up at eight or nine. I get up, I do my workout and then I go back to bed if I have to. It's tough. When you're on the road, there are times that it definitely gets rough to handle but you've just got to find a way to do it.

SG: And we've seen from your shows, you don't do without, so you still enjoy the perks of the job.

BM: Well, you've got to enjoy what you're doing. I went back to the very beginning of our conversation. In the very end of it, what's it all worth if at the end of everything you've achieved or done, at some point along the way you didn't enjoy yourself. That's the whole premise is finding that balance.

SG: After the book, the shows and the music, will we know who the real Bret Michaels is?

BM: It may be a combination of all of the above. It's like at times, you look at all that and you go how do you categorize something? I'm not sure there's exactly one category. I think that's what has made my journey unique is there's different facets and different sides that I haven't quite put my finger on, let alone other people looking at it but I think they'll have a good understanding that deep down, I would like to believe I'm a good soul. I treat people right, I treat 'em with respect and I'm having a lot of fun doing it.

SG: We'll root for you on The Apprentice.

BM: Thanks for doing this and The Apprentice was awesome. It was a good learning experience and I didn't get to say this, but I just wanted to say this about Donald Trump. Besides the fact you watch him, you have respect for him, the one thing about Trump that I think is amazing, I think in his life he's been both the predator and the prey and he is able to be nice to people, but when he gets stuff done, man, he gets it done. It was interesting to watch how he delegates. It was a good learning experience for me. He has a great presence but he also is concise when he talks with names, with people. He was very 'on.' It was interesting just to watch him work and you realize why there's a reason people are successful at what they do.

SG: Obviously we can't give away who gets fired, but if you're in the boardroom, imagine What must it be like to hear those words?

BM: Let me tell you something, I'm just going to make it funny. If you want to catch me on The Apprentice show, don't miss the first few episodes. You might want to tune in early. I'll just leave it at that. No one wants to be fired or hear that. That's all I'm saying, but I came out trying. How's that sound?